THE Global Justice Movement Website

Friday, June 30, 2017

While world leaders
seem to flail about with no idea what to do about world problems — or, worse,
know exactly what to do to gather ever-increasing amounts of power into their
own hands — we have been seeing signs that word of the Just Third Way is
starting to spread.Recently we had a
number of people remark to us that were it not for CESJ and the Just Third Way,
they would have given up hope.And there
are some good things not only to hope for, but to work for:

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Back in the
eighteenth century the Good Doctor, Samuel Johnson, chastised his Boswell . . .
who happened to be James Boswell . . . for ostentatiously giving a gratuity of
one shilling (12 pence) for a service for which the customary remuneration was
6 pence.If memory serves, it was the
tip to a porter for helping hand down passengers’ baggage from a coach.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Are
encyclicals getting too long?And is
anybody reading (or understanding) them?Judging from all the acrimony over, say Amoris Laetitia (not technically an encyclical, but we’re making a
point here), the answer is “no.”The
longer and wordier encyclicals get, the less impact they seem to have.The message(s) tend(s) to get lost in all the
explanations and qualifications.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

A few days ago
someone commented concerning Gregory XVI’s
Singulari Nos, “On the Errors of
Lamennais,” at a little over fifteen hundred words, “Man,
encyclicals used to be so short!”Yet
the same pope’s Mirari Vos,
“On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism” — arguably the first “social
encyclical” — from two years earlier, clocks in at a little over
four thousand words in the English version, leaving Singulari Nos in the dust.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Today we present
our “Man Bites Dog” feature: what happened when Pope Gregory XVI in the
encyclical Mirari Vos corrected the
hero of our story, the Abbé de Lamennais.Some authorities consider de Lamennais the forerunner of liberal or
social Catholicism (see, e.g., J.W.
Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European
Thought, 1848-1914. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000, 225-226).

Friday, June 23, 2017

This past week we’ve
probably been finding out more about the history of social justice and the way
the term was coopted by the socialists, modernists, and New Agers than we
really want to know, but that we need to know.And there have been a few more recent events as well —

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at the errors made by the Abbé Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais and
why they were wrong.This is important
because the errors de Lamennais made eventually became the foundation of what
many people think is authentic Catholic social teaching — and they are wrong.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at the Abbé Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamennais’s rather one-sided
notion of the separation of Church and State: that the State must not attempt
to control the Church, but that the Church must have complete control of the
State.De Lamennais’s ideal society was
a democratic theocracy, in contrast to the theory of Joseph-Marie comte de
Maistre (1753-1821) that the ideal society was a monarchic theocracy. . . .

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at the Catholic Church’s condemnation of “freedom of conscience” . . .
which sounds pretty shocking until you find out that “freedom of conscience” as
it was being used when Pope Gregory XVI condemned it had about as much to do
with religious freedom as “free love” had to do with marriage and family, or
“free thinking” had to do with reason.“Free” was just a good-sounding word to stick in front of something to
hide its real meaning.

Monday, June 19, 2017

While researching
the origins of Rerum Novarum (1891),
probably Pope Leo XIII’s best-known encyclical, we came across something that
needs a little explanation, especially in the twenty-first century.No, we’re not talking about how Leo XIII’s
careful analysis of the evil of socialism and mandated alternative of
widespread capital ownership was transformed by vested interests into a
condemnation of capitalism.

Friday, June 16, 2017

As summer gets
underway next week, people in the Just Third Way are taking the opportunity to
get various projects moving again.In
that, we’re doing a bit better than a lot of governments around the world who
seem baffled about what to do — largely because they don’t yet know about the
Just Third Way.But we’re doing what we
can —

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at a few of the papal statements underscoring the importance of
widespread private property in capital.As thinkers through the ages have noted, people are either owners, or
they are owned — one way or another . . . and the worst way to be owned (not
that there is any good way) is to be owned indirectly by having the system or
those who control the system keep people in a permanent condition of
dependency.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at the situation of the non-owning worker, and briefly touched on the
matter of the fair wage, which many people assume to be the essence of social
justice.Much to the surprise of such
people, however, it turns out that neither wages nor private property is the
essence of social justice.Both wages and private property come under individual justice.As Pope Pius XI explained in § 79 of Quadragesimo Anno,

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at the ancient Roman custom of the peculium
and how knowing about it helps us understand what the heck (or heaven) Jesus
was talking about.That’s all very nice,
of course, but how does this esoteric historical knowledge have any relevance
for the modern day and age?After all,
it’s interesting to know that the otherwise daunting Roman pater familias with his terrible potestas that (in theory) included the power of life and death over
his children and slaves would train them to enter society by letting them
manage capital . . . but so what?

Monday, June 12, 2017

Last week we
started looking at the “Parable of the Talents,” and found what seemed to be
one or two anomalies in it.Not in the
message, of course.That is pretty
straightforward: use your God-given talents or you will answer for it.What seemed a little odd was the parable
itself: a slave owner hands over large sums of money to some slaves and goes on
a trip.

Friday, June 9, 2017

The Just Third Way
continues to move forward.There have
been a number of events this week suggesting that the ideas may be starting to
work into the general consciousness, and may soon start stirring up some
enquiries about solutions to some of the more pressing world problems.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

At first glance,
Jesus’s “Parable of the Talents” in Matthew 25:14-30 seems straightforward —
and it is.The message is obvious,
especially to an audience that understands English, a language in which by coincidence the
word for the unit of measurement used, the talent, is the same as the word
commonly used for ability, capacity, or aptitude, i.e., talent.The message of the parable is, use
the gifts God gave you, or you will be held answerable for wasting them.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an
interesting piece about President Emmanuel Macron of France, comparing him — at
least on the charismamometer — with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.As the article by Walter Russell Mead of the
Hudson Institute stated, “[Macron] is approaching the job like a French Ronald
Reagan. . . . Reagan presented himself as a heroic and transformational
leader.This is what Mr. Macron has been
doing.”(“Has France Found Its Ronald Reagan?”
The Wall Street Journal, 06/06/17,
A15.)

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Recently someone
sent us the link to an article by Steven Kates published in 2010 on “The
Failure of Keynesian Economics.”As
everyone who reads this blog knows — or should know — we’re not ones to let
mere antiquity determine whether or not something is true; we don’t hold with
those who worship the past any more than with those who reject it out of hand.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Last week we had
a short series on “What is Socialism?”One of the people who commented on it when it was posted in a “distributist”
forum tried to make the case that distributism and Catholic social teaching are
pretty much the same thing (indicating an inadequate understanding of the
difference between application and principle), and that both distributism and
Catholic social teaching are socialist . . . in a non-Marxist way, of course .
. . unless you’re into the “Theology of Liberation,” which raises other issues
such as what you mean by theology and liberty.

Friday, June 2, 2017

There has not been
much visible movement in the Just Third Way this week, although there has been
a great deal of research and scholarship accomplished, particularly in the
understanding of how basic concepts of truth and justice have been corrupted by
special interests over the centuries.As
for the news,

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Yesterday we
looked at a correct understanding of private property: it is both a natural
right that is absolute in the sense that every human being has the right to be
an owner, and a set of manmade and socially determined rights and duties that
define how an owner may use what he or she owns.Today we look at why socialism, defined as
the abolition of private property in capital, is wrong, that is, contrary to
nature.